Thomas Edison, Winston Churchill, John D. Rockefeller, Albert Einstein, and Leonardo DaVinci are all said to have taken naps.

John F. Kennedy, Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, and Lyndon B. Johnson took naps while in office, as did first lady Eleanor Roosevelt.

If you don’t currently take naps, there are some excellent reasons you should.

Taking a nap can:

Reduce stress

Help you learn new information

Improve memory

Increase alertness and productivity

Improve accuracy

Increase creativity

Lift your mood by increasing serotonin

Minimize the need for caffeine to get through the day

A Harvard study proved that taking a nap can make you more productive for the rest of the day. (12)

A study at NASA on sleepy military pilots and astronauts found that a 40-minute nap improved performance 34% and alertness 100%. Naps reduced mistakes and accidents. (13)

Sleeping on the Job

Today, in part because of the NASA study, pilots on international flights take turns enjoying “NASA naps” to refresh and stay alert.

Other companies have begun to institute mid-day sleeping as well.

You might expect that alternative companies like Rodale Press or Ben & Jerry’s would provide nap rooms for their employees.

But you would be surprised at some of the other companies that encourage napping.

Google, Zappos, Nike, British Airways, Viacom, and Pizza Hut have nap rooms for their employees.

Huffington Post reportedly has “energy pods” for napping that awaken you gently with vibration and light.

These forward-thinking companies realize that providing napping facilities is a win-win move that makes for a happier, healthier, more productive workforce.

Some businesses outsource employee naps to salons like Yelo Spa in New York.

Yelo offers napping as part of its menu of day spa services where clients pay $1.00 per minute to take a nap. The idea of sleep or nap salons, as you might guess, originated in sleep-deprived Japan.

According to CareerBuilder.com, half of Fortune 500 companies will fire you if you nap on the job, so you need to know where your employer stands before you put the “do not disturb” sign on your door. (14)

This is a short-sighted policy because sleep deprivation is a national epidemic estimated to cause $150 billion per year in lost productivity. (15)

How to Nap Correctly

Napping can backfire. It can leave you feeling groggy. It can also keep you up at night.

According to sleep researcher Sara Mednick, PhD, author of Take a Nap, Change Your Life, follow these simple guidelines:

Okay, I don’t do these sleep offenses but still haven’t slept for the past 25 years. Well, I mean I haven’t slept well and neither does anyone else in my family. What then? Where is the next article that tells me what I need to look at?

http://bebrainfit.com Deane Alban

Sleeping well has been a lifelong challenge for me, too. If you click on the links in the article you’ll be taken to several other posts about sleep including a podcast interview I did with a sleep expert. Mouse over a link and you’ll see the title of the post. I think a core problem for many is chronodisruption – too much artificial light in the evening and too little natural light during the day. You can read more about that here: http://bebrainfit.com/lifestyle/sleep/avoiding-chronodisruption-a-dangerous-modern-malady/